Heavy traffic and burgeoning crowds can only mean one of two things. Either it is the Dubai Shopping Festival or it is GITEX.
Regular readers will know that GITEX is a personal challenge for me as the majority of attendees are really consumers as opposed to the business data center end users that VMware fits. Nevertheless despite the early morning traffic and parking dramas I always get to meet lots of interesting people and generally have good fun whilst I am there.
Today the show opened. Opening day starts at 1pm – just prior to this Sheikh Mohammed and his entourage get a personal tour of the show and it was nice to see him this morning opening procedures.
I was soon into the swing of things and into full exhibition mode giving the opening presentation and trying my best to raise a few smiles and give away some corporate gifts to those people willing to ask me a question. I even managed to get a decent sized crowd at the end of it. Just after I finished I wondered back to the pod to hear some loud music playing.
Looking down the hall I could see a golf cart with a rather robot sat on the back of it – flanked by bazooka looking speaker tubes. I was more impressed when it stopped near the stand and the robot got up and started a little song and dance act.
This was great I thought until it walked directly at me a little too quickly with sound effects taken directly from Robocop. I hadn’t moved so fast since I had to get off a horse and cart in Egypt.
Not sure why I was freaked out – but it is large and intimidating. Searching through twitter this evening and @mahmoodb had all ready posted the robot up on youtube for our viewing pleasure:
It certainly drew crowds of cellphone filming gadget lovers to record it. I thought it was good of the organizers to put something a little different on this year. I wonder if there will be any more surprises this week, it not I will settle for some more dancing robot. Only this time I will be viewing from a further distance.
hi aaron,
i read somewhere that hotel address marina went open this weekend ,maybe it is interessing for writing about it on your blog
By: borghs yves on October 19, 2009
at 4:09 pm
If you have any spotify invites left I would really appreciate one.
Been reading your blog for ages now and loads of really good material covered. The dancing robot at GITEX is hillarious, surprised you never started singing when it came up to you. I have watched your Karaoke videos and find them really entertaining.
Mat
By: Mat on October 26, 2009
at 3:58 am
Hi Borghs – the Address hotel in the marina hasn’t opened yet (at least it wasn’t when I drove by the other day)
Hi Mat – Thanks for the kind words – you have a spotify invite!
By: Aaron on October 26, 2009
at 8:43 am
Hi Aaron,
The Spotify invite you sent has not arrived probably lost in the hotmail abyss along with countless other messages could you please resend it to the new E-mail address I have provided.
Is the trial version of VMWare workstation the same as the full version or are there restrictions on the range of functions available in the trial version?
The PC’s you have in your flat are fantastic, I am in the process of working out the cost of building a PC myself at the moment. Not quite as powerful as your new PC but it will have an i7 920 quad core and 6GB of DDR3 ram. Which chip would you recommend the Bloomfield or Lynnfield, people have told me the Lynnfield but I am not sure at the moment. Thanks very much for resending the Spotify invite and any techy advice would be much appreciated (I am really looking forward to building my new PC).
Thanks again,
Mat.
By: Mat on October 27, 2009
at 9:19 pm
Hi Matt – check again, I have re-sent it to the new email.
The trial version is just like the full product – no restrictions bar the time-bound limit of the trial. Do check out the new version of VMware workstation 7 released today which supports Windows 7 and Directx 9.0c.
As for CPUs it is an interesting question as i5 and i7 have slightly different architectures and in the low end of i7 (920) then the i5 has the price performance that can’t be beat right now. However the 1366 socket of the i7 will allow you to slide a six core Westmere straight in for cool and fast fun.
For Me? i7 every time and ride the upgrade train when it comes.
Good luck – (note get an SSD drive – it is the single biggest upgrade you can give a system)
By: Aaron on October 27, 2009
at 10:00 pm
Thanks for re-sending the invite and for the techy advice.
I am now considering delaying building my PC until the Westmere chip is released, although there is no scheduled date for the release of this chip other than 2010. The solid state drive would be a brilliant addition to my new PC and I will try and include it when I calculate the cost of the system I intend to build.
Thanks again,
Mat.
By: Mat on October 27, 2009
at 10:50 pm
No problem Mat – glad you got it working. Don’t wait too long or you will never end up getting anything! If I were you get an x58 mobo and the i920 and enjoy it. Add the other stuff when you can afford it or when it comes out.
By: Aaron on October 27, 2009
at 11:07 pm
Hi Aaron,
Could i get in touch with you regarding vmware jobs out there. I was just in dubai over xmas for the 5th and now would really like to move there.
Cheers mate
B
By: bheki on January 4, 2010
at 2:01 pm
@Bheki – I will ping you an email
By: Aaron on January 4, 2010
at 3:12 pm